I was going to write about jelly babies (probably at length) this week. The training plan for the Sunday long run specified practicing "Hydration and Nutrition". Hydration I'm reasonably happy with but I've never eaten while running, in part because I know running anything like close to a meal (apart from, apparently, breakfast) gives me horrible indigestion. However all advice suggests you ought to eat something while running a marathon and most advice recommends either "protein gels" or jelly babies. Now "protein gel" does have an attractive futuristic sound to it (although information on how they taste ranges from "horrible" to "some have a flavour that is better than others") however, honestly? if the alternative is jelly babies the protein gels aren't going to get much of a look in.

According to the Internet, the human body can absorb between 30-60g carbohydrate per hour. According to the packet, 4 jelly babies contain 21g carbohydrate. This works out at 6-12 jelly babies per hour of running. I settled on 3 every 20 minutes. It was OK, I guess? I found them fiddly and annoying and 24 jelly babies take up a surprisingly large amount of space but it was definitely liveable with.

I was supposed to run 14 miles - this seemed like a big jump in distance to me given the long run at the end of the easy week barely made 5 miles and the long run the previous week was only 10 miles. Rule of thumb is you shouldn't increase your running distance by more than 10% per week, but I vaguely assumed, without checking, that I was having shorter runs earlier in the week to compensate. Anyway off I went, grumbling about jelly babies, on Sunday morning. At 12 miles my knee suddenly started hurting. I slowed to a walk. The knee was fine walking, so after 5 minutes I tentatively started running again and then stopped very quickly and walked home. It seemed to be mostly fine though twingeing occasionally. I elevated it a bit and took some ibuprofen then suddenly, halfway through cooking supper, I had the weirdest sensation of "I'm not sure this leg is actually weight-bearing". It wasn't pain and I didn't collapse to the floor or anything but the leg definitely wasn't right. By Monday morning I was having a return of the ankle pains that had been plaguing me the last few weeks and the knee protested every time I walked at a speed above "very slow". I've not run since. The knee is a lot better, in fact I barely notice it beyond a vague sensation that something isn't quite right but I'm dithering badly about what to do next. I shall probably try a slow (possibly long depending how things are feeling) run on Sunday and see where I am then.

KM run this week: 19.3kmKM run in 2018: 250.5

While raising money for charity is not my motivation for participation, it is a big part of the London Marathon. Shelter have bribed me with a T-shirt (which arrived this week) and the promise of a post-race massage. People have been incredibly generous already (and at the moment, obviously, it's not entirely clear I'll be running at all), but you can donate here should you feel so inclined.

At the moment I'm waiting to see. I've had problems with this knee for years - though problems which actually vanished when I took up running (so much so that I'd almost forgotten what they were like). But of course now I can tell the GP it's effecting my quality of life which I couldn't in the past so maybe they will take it more seriously.